


Ghosts

by jackaalope



Series: After the End [2]
Category: True Detective
Genre: M/M, MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS RELATING TO DRUG ADDICTION, trigger warnings for references to suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:43:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 10,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2066847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackaalope/pseuds/jackaalope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Has to get worse before it gets better. Has to get worse before it gets better. Has to get worse before it gets better. Or at least that’s what Marty kept telling himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Witches

**Author's Note:**

> I know that this chapter isn't such a great example (actually a terrible example; sorry hahaha), but I'm hoping to make this a much lighter and happier fan fiction than the last. I'm picking up right where I left off at the end of an earlier fic called "Clockwise", but it should be pretty much a-okay to read them out of order.
> 
> EDIT: Guys, know that there are MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS in here relating drug addiction/abuse/withdrawal. Please be careful!!!!

Marty was thinner now, more toned, noticeably so—like he’d been spending an awful lot of time at the gym in his absence rather than sitting on the couch, watching TV with his pet invalid. He looked good. And it was, maybe, embarrassingly obvious that he’d dressed up a little for the occasion. Not a button-down or some shit like that, but jeans and that yellow V-neck T-shirt. Rust had mentioned once that the color tasted like almonds, and Marty’d gotten a kick out of that, or must have despite his pretended derision, because he’d worn it first turn of every laundry-run after that. He was shaven and clean and smelling like that same old laundry detergent that Maggie had used, that he used now. He’d never worn cologne, but his deodorant, sitting on the counter by the sink, had professed to smelling like lemongrass. Rust didn’t know what the hell lemongrass was but, whatever it was, it was a soft and familiar smell and he wanted to keep it as close to his chest as possible.

Sometime in that washed-out space of four months, and he didn’t remember when or how or why, Rust had hacked off his hair, so that it now stood in uneven, graying tufts on the top of his head. Surprised him when he’d accidentally caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror opposite the bar and there staring back at him was wild thing with a full beard and half-shorn hair stuck up in all directions. His eyes were swollen and his brain felt swollen, too. When he’d finally made the call and locked the door behind the last customer, and inclined his head at Marty to follow him into the back room where he slept, he was almost embarrassed at the sight of the place. Would have been if he hadn’t needed to swear off embarrassment long ago. Because, God, seeing that shit from Marty’s eyes, it looked terrible: armies of empty bottles and cans from months ago, and pages of newspaper stretched out on the little table, scattered with the remnants of powders of various description, and clothes scattered like ten Wicked Witches of the West had melted on the floor, and needles everywhere, their tips stained and tarnished, and dirty dishes lining every available surface, some with grey and blue mold crusted onto them, and ashes tapped right onto the concrete floor by the holey couch now sitting in small piles like tumbleweeds, and the collection of black-burnt spoons on its arm, and pills bottles lined up on the window alongside a pile of spent lighters, and endless crumpled boxes of cigarettes everywhere—and the whole place smelling like twenty or more small animals had picked this spot to die. There were no windows. Only the light that Rust flicked on now.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

Rust took a glance at his face and pulled a drag off his cigarette.

“You wanna go someplace else?”

“No, I just…” Marty wasn’t looking at him, still peering with bewildered eyes around, taking a step forward and sending an empty can clattering. “Shit. I mean, is this… Man, what the fuck have you been doing?”

“Trying to die.” He shut the door behind him. “C’mon. The mattress is nice and comfy.”

Marty’d caught sight of all of it now. Needles and spoons and everything. And something in his chest had dropped out and fallen. His hands felt too empty. His brain was suddenly humming with fierce terror. And when he turned to look back at Rust, he saw it. He could see it. See the vague blackness in his eyes and the alien sharpness in his cheekbones that the beard couldn’t quite soften.

He came toward him in slowness like a dream, took up one of his skeleton’s wrists in each hand. He pushed back the sleeves and Rust, like a ragdoll, let him, let him turn over his arms and look.

God. God fucking damn. Holy shit.

“What’re you gonna do, Marty, have me arrested? You wanna take a picture while they’re good’n fresh? Probably good enough evidence to hold up in a courtroom, you think?”

His tone was brittle, defensive. His fingers had closed around Marty’s wrists in the same way. His eyes were rimmed with red, when Marty looked at them, smudged underneath with sunset colors.

“Holy fuck, Rust,” he whispered, and watched him choke down a flinch. Wondered how long it’d been since he’d heard his name. Wondered how it sounded now hearing it used in reprimand, in Marty’s voice. Watched him blink slow and tired instead. “Holy fuck.”

“What do you want from me, Marty?”

“I… Well, no offense, but I figured you weren’t doing too well. But I didn’t… You’re gonna end up killing yourself like this. You know that? This is serious stuff, Rust. Real serious. I seen guys who—”

“Wager I seen worse.”

“Yeah.” Marty nodded, nostrils flared. “Yeah, I reckon you have. And so you should fucking know better, then. So what are you trying to play at, Rust? Explain it to me. Because I sure as hell don’t get it.”

Rust was just staring back at him, beige and even.

“You ‘don’t get it’. Huh. You want me to explain to you why people take drugs?”

“You fucking moron,” Marty growled. “I know why people take drugs. I want you to explain to me why you’re—” And he lowered his voice and looked around in a way that made the corners of Rust’s mouth twitch up a little bit. “Why you’re shooting up _heroin_ , for Christ’s sake. I want to know what the fuck is wrong with you.”

Rust laughed at that last sentence, in a short little exhale through his nose.

“If it makes you feel better to continue pretending it’s something new, then go right the fuck ahead. But, Marty, I tell you, I got at this shit every chance I could get when I was undercover. Crash was a wild son of a bitch and he sure did like those uppers, but me? Oh, my heart always belonged to the downers. This has been a long time coming.”

He tugged his wrists out of Marty’s grip and stubbed out his cigarette, which had burned by now into just a long column of ash, against the wall, let it drop onto the concrete floor. He shook another one out of the pack in his breast pocket and got out his lighter. It went up with no trouble. His hands were steadier than Marty’d seen them in a long time.

“Doesn’t have to be like this, Rust.”

“It does. Eventually, anyway.”

“You’re gonna end up killing yourself.”

“Told you that already.”

“That’s your plan. Your wonderful plan. Shoot up heroin until you overdose.”

“Something like that.”

“What?” Marty said, empty hands now curled into fists. “Was drinking yourself to death not quick enough for you?”

Rust sucked on his cigarette, blew smoke off his bottom lip in a thin stream up to the ceiling.

“Look, my gumption ran out after that try with your gun,” he said. “But I didn’t see any reason to continue moving and breathing and crawling on this lonely hunk of rock in space. So I started working harder at furthering myself towards the inevitable end.”

Marty gaped at him.

“ _Me!_ ” he spluttered. “I don’t count as a reason? Did you ever think how _I’d_ feel?”

“You left,” said Rust, simply. “You didn’t want me around anymore. I didn’t want to be around anymore. That leaves a grand total of zero living people who find my continued existence to be of benefit to them. Hence, the most efficient, most rational solution is to oil the gears in an already steadily chugging machine.”

“Are you really—are you _that_ far removed from reality that you’re calling this a rational solution to a problem?” It wasn’t a question. Just a snarl. He already knew the answer.

Rust clapped Marty on the shoulder, stepped past him.

“Naw, just explaining my goddamn thought processes, Marty,” he said. “Missed the hell out of you. Now you’re back. So let’s fuck.”

He was making his way to the mattress in the corner. There were piles of books on it but no sheets. Beside it sat a wicker lamp with no lampshade, a moth fluttering against its bulb, wings making tiny ringing sounds on the glass. Rust sat down and it fluttered away, towards him, for a moment before being drawn back to that light like a fragile white magnet.

Marty followed.

“Where have you been getting the money?”

“I get great tips. Look at this body.”

“Oh, fuck you. I mean it.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little balding head about it, Marty. Doesn’t concern you.” His eyes were soft as he looked up at Marty sitting down beside him. “We can talk about all of this later. But right now I’m still not completely satisfied that you aren’t a figment of my fucking imagination, and I believe that I’d much rather—”

And he settled his arm over Marty’s shoulders and pulled him tight, kissed him with an open, breathing mouth still full of smoke. He put his teeth lightly around his bottom lip and tugged, just a little bit. And then they were falling together, collapsing and melting into one another like statues that have suddenly been granted muscles and don’t quite know how to use them yet. Slotting legs and noses together. Settling back into the familiar sounds of each other’s heartbeats.

The moth at the lamp eventually fell, its body dried and stiff, onto the concrete floor. Their clothes joined the drifts of clutter. The fan in the corner hummed in its wheezing, limping way.

At some point during the night, Rust got up and turned off the lamp and snatched something off the table and slipped into the bathroom for an unusually long period of time. But when he came back, he pressed gently back into Marty arms and was asleep within seconds on the crook of his shoulder.


	2. Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I may or may not have picked up a little bit of a Rust-eating-food kink in this fandom. Sigh.

When Rust rolled over in the morning, internal clock humming, the other side of the bed was empty. It took a minute to register, before the cold was seeping down the sides of his chest. But when it did, it did. And he sat up and looked around, open-mouthed, in the dark. He turned on the light. Nothing there but empty bottles, empty plastic bags, empty clothes.

 Disbelief. He sat there staring. A tugging sensation was running over the skin of his heart and his lungs and his throat, as if seagulls were squabbling over the little scraps of warm flesh still left in him like they were French fries dropped on a boardwalk. He’d imagined it. Imagined the whole thing. The little demon with the movie projector in his brain had been fucking with him again. He was alone. Nobody else. Nothing else. There was—

And then Marty pushed quietly through the door and into the room.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he said, when he saw the light on. “I went and got us some bagels.”

He stood, holding the bag, and looked doubtfully at what seemed to have once been a countertop up against the wall, but which was now a vague shape obscured by clutter.

Rust coughed at the lump that had risen up in his throat.

“What kind j’you get?”

“Uh, three plain for me, three everything for you.”

“Cream cheese?”

“Yeah.”

A moan of gratitude slipped over Rust’s lips before he could stop it.

“Hail to Saint Marty, patron of creature comforts,” he said, pushing himself up off the mattress to clear a space on the counter. A stack of books went to the table; a newspaper slapped against the concrete floor when he dropped it; a mostly-empty pack of cigarettes went in his pocket; two empty bottles were placed precariously on another section of counter about a foot to the right. This was all done with Rust’s usual slow precision, looking almost outlandish in an environment so chaotic. The empty space remaining was brushed off with dirty hands, which were then wiped on jeans.

Marty looked at the countertop dubiously for a moment before he shrugged and set down the bag. He peeked inside and choose two in one hand: one plain, one everything. He passed the everything to Rust and Rust took it, went and sat on the couch, and took his knife—the old one, the one his pop had given him a couple of lifetimes ago—off the table to cut it. When Marty sat next to him, he took a glance at what else was on the table, and then he stopped looking. The cream cheese stayed on his knee, out of the radius of possible contamination, until Rust took it and scooped a glob out with his knife, leaving almost (but not quite) imperceptible strokes of tan residue in the white. Marty didn’t touch it after that.

It was worth it, though. The first bite drew a noise from Rust’s throat that made the hinge of Marty’s jaw itch, made his mouth go dry. He tried to look over, and to pretend like he wasn’t. But there was no need to hide it; Rust was fully and completely engrossed, like a starving yard-dog whose owner could finally be bothered to toss him some stale bread. There was cream cheese on his fingers. Marty settled back a little further into the couch, surreptitiously, when Rust paused lick them off.

“Figured you looked like you could use a couple square meals,” he said. And Rust, looking up, leaned over and kissed him squarely on the mouth. His fingers on Marty’s temple were still the slightest bit damp. Their eyes met, centimeters apart. Their breath moved across one another’s faces, warm and familiar.

“Shit,” said Rust, long and slow. There was a smile in his voice. “I been living on those motherfucking onion-mustard pretzel things and roasted peanuts. I hope you fully recognize the significance of your re-entry into my life.”

“Mm,” said Marty. “Significance, huh?”

And that was all they said, but Rust kept his hand curved around Marty’s inner thigh as he resumed eating. Marty began, taking out a wrapped pat of butter and smearing it, straight off the foil, onto the uncut surface of his bagel because there was no way in hell he was touching Rust’s knife. And he’d forgotten to ask for plastic ones.

The rest of Rust’s everything bagel was gone in a matter of moments and, when he’d finished, he leaned into Marty and closed his eyes on his shoulder, a long exhale rattling out between his lips. His thumb smoothed circles on Marty’s thigh.

“You planning on sticking around?” he asked, after a minute or two of quiet.

Marty knew what he meant, knew the question had been turned over and softened before being spoken aloud.

“You ain’t getting rid of me so easy in this life, darlin’,” he said, without even having to think.

And he settled his arm around Rust’s bony shoulders.


	3. Cats

Neither of them was in very good shape. Marty’s age was showing on him; his arteries were a little too tight, or so the doctor had said. Still, he’d finally taken advantage of that first-month-free membership at that gym in the strip mall across from his apartment after that morning in the grocery store, and he’d gotten himself hooked on the workouts. Rust had spent four months trying to tear down every wall in his body.

Marty’d never read Dostoyevsky or Nietzsche or Descartes, but he’d been doing pretty good at Wheel of Fortune lately. Rust still wasn’t entirely sure whether or not Marty was real. He didn’t know what month it was. There was a dullness in his eyes that didn’t seem to be clearing and his words came slow and tired and hoarse.

Scared the hell out of Marty, having the upper hand like this. Because, hard as it was to admit it, he’d never had it before, not even when they were young. Oh, he’d got a few good throws in when they’d fought. But when Rust had fought back then, it was only ever halfway about his opponent.

Scared him; but that didn’t mean he wasn’t gonna take advantage of it now. He had to. Had to like he had to keep the air conditioning on in the summer, brush his teeth, tie his shoelaces: wouldn’t kill him if he didn’t, but it was something he wouldn’t want to suffer the consequences of. More than that, really. He’d sooner skip brushing his teeth for three years than let this happen. And so when Rust pulled out of his arms, got up, slipped something from the table into his pocket, and headed in the direction of the door of the bathroom, Marty stood up too.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Rust came to a gradual stop.

“Knew you’d give me a hard time about it,” he said, face still turned to the door like some sick sunflower in the winter searching the sky.

“Yeah.” Marty’s eyes were wide, his head nodding. “Yeah, you got that right. Give it here.”

Rust turned and looked at him. Looked him up and down and gave a little smile, as detached and inhuman as the Cheshire Cat’s.

“Guess I got no real choice in the matter, do I?”

“Nope,” said Marty. It was practically a growl.

A minute of quiet passed with the two of them staring at one another, Marty’s eyes burning, lips drawn up to show his crooked teeth, Rust’s head tilted to one side. They breathed, both a little quicker than they would have liked. Blue eyes on blue eyes on blue eyes on blue eyes.

And then Rust crossed the floor and took something out of his pocket and pressed it into Marty’s palm. Neither of them looked away. Marty closed his fingers up like the teeth of a hunter’s trap and put it in his pocket. Rust’s jaw was tight.

“I want you to call your boss and tell him you’re taking some time off.”

“I don’t have a fucking phone,” he snarled.

“Then you’re gonna call him when we get back to my place.”

“Your place.”

“Yeah, my place. You’re not staying in this shithole.”

“This is where I _live_ , you stupid son of a bitch. You ain’t gettin’ me out of here.”

“You wanna take a bet?” Marty asked, pushing up closer to him, chest to chest, flared nostrils breathing onto flared nostrils. Blue eyes on blue eyes.

“Fuck you,” said Rust, quietly. “If this were you, I’d treat you like a man.”

“I am. If you were anything else, I’d be a hell of a lot gentler.”

The space between Rust’s eyebrows flattened. His lips formed the beginning of a question, then dropped. Marty nodded, stepped back a little.

“If you want dignity,” he told him, “then fucking earn it.”


	4. Thunderclouds

 

 

Lunch was burgers cooked on Marty’s grill, eaten at Marty’s table, Marty’s apartment. It passed mostly without incident or talk, the only distraction when Rust’s glass of water slipped out of his fingers and fell into his lap, unbroken and whole, drenching him, icecubes clattering on his feet. Neither of them acknowledged it. Rust just picked up the empty glass, set it back on the table, and kept eating. When he was finished, he got up and got out the dishtowel, sopped up most of the water, and then disappeared into Marty’s room and came back in a pair of his sweatpants.

They sat on the couch and watched TV after that, curled into one another in a tangle of heads and shoulders and legs and laps. Their faces were set, calm, but their bodies might have betrayed them if you’d looked closely enough. One of them gripped onto an arm like a sailor who sees thunderclouds up ahead grips the side of a boat, so tight it’d nearly bruise; the other just held on gently and waited for something worse than trembling to come.

It came. By five p.m. Rust was like a small, shivering radiator in Marty’s arms, sweat pooling dark on Marty’s shirt.

“You alright?”

“Mm-hmm.” His eyelids were still drawn and sleepy, voice as slow and emotionless as ever. He looked up at him. “You’re aware, though, right, that I could die like this, aren’t you?”

Marty disentangled himself from him, shaking his head as he stood up.

“You ain’t gonna die,” he grumbled. “You want fish sticks?”

“Sure.”

And, with Rust still staring disinterestedly at the TV, Marty exited the room. He bypassed the kitchen and went into his room and sat at the desk with his computer. Pulled up Internet Explorer; pulled up Wikipedia; typed it in, slowly, like a kid writing out a curse word.

When he came back into the living room with its Creamsicle-colored walls, Rust looked up immediately—surprised Marty, who was used to watching him ignore him until it became nearly absurd.

“So I reckon you were right.”

Rust’s face was so skeletal right now, even under that goddamn animal that seemed to be growing out of the lower half of it, that any little expression there was magnified to near-human proportions. Now he looked smug. Almost.

“So I think I better get you to a hospital.”

“No.”

Marty tilted his head like a dog looking for the best angle to go at a throat, eyes flashing anger.

“We’re not fucking doing this again,” he said. “This thing where I do something stupid as hell because I think you’re getting better and then all of a sudden—”

“I’m going back to my place, then, if you’re gonna send me to a fucking hospital. I’m not going to a hospital again, Marty. I’m not doing it. Especially not for this—do you know what they’re gonna fucking do to me? Because I’ve been through this all before. They’re gonna send me to fucking _rehab_ and keep me there for as long as they fucking please while psychiatrists and therapists and doctors come and interrogate me and pretend like it’s actually doing something and then turn around and make me _pay_ for it—and, shit, man, I ain’t got the money. Or the time or patience or the goddamn will to live to do that all again. So fuck it.”

He’d risen to his feet halfway through, but now sagged with his hip against the doorframe, elbow propped up and fingers plucking at tufts of his graying hair. Marty put a hand on his shoulder and drew his eyes back to the present, and to him.

“Rust, listen to me.”

“I been listening.”

“Good,” said Marty. “Good. Then you’re aware that I don’t want you to fucking die.”

“Marty,” Rust said, and he was smiling now. A small, sad smile. “I don’t want to die either anymore. ‘Fact, what I mean is, I don’t want to _want_ to die. Which is why you can’t bring me back to the hospital, Marty. I’d rather die trying. If I gotta die, I’d rather die here, right here, you know? With—with you. I’d… rather that than months or even a year from now when I can finally convince them that I’m cured and go back home to find another—another gun and…”

He choked down whatever he had been going to say next and turned away, swiping at his nose with an arm. There were small, glistening things trailing down his cheeks.

“Hey,” said Marty, quietly, his thumb rubbing circles into the burning skin of Rust’s shoulder. “Hey. It’s alright now.”

Rust caught a laugh and rattled it through his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“God, _now_ you apologize to me.”

“Apologies are just masturbation in front of a mirror,” Rust said, and God knew what he meant by that. But then he added in a mutter, still staring at the Creamsicle wall, “Trying to make myself feel better, is all. Like you said. Dignity. Goddamn programming,” and Marty thought he understood.

He led him back to the couch, sat him down, draped an arm around his waist.

“So you gonna take me to the hospital or not?” His voice was flat.

“No,” Marty said. “I’m not. But if you start feeling too bad, if you can’t breathe or your heart starts going nuts or something, you’re gonna fucking tell me and I’m gonna call an ambulance. And that’s not a request, you understand?”

Rust nodded.

“Good,” said Marty, clapping him on the shoulder as he got up. “Now let’s see about those fish sticks.”


	5. Monsters

_Has to get worse before it gets better. Has to get worse before it gets better. Has to get worse before it gets better._ Or at least that’s what Marty kept telling himself.

 

The sky was shucking off fat, wet shards of itself. They clattered all over the windows and the roof of that room. Rust wasn’t entirely sure where he was, but he knew he was cold, and he knew that he was tired and he felt like throwing up and his body was sore with fever, and he knew that there were Things clustered in a tight crowd around the bed and that Marty’s presence, Marty lying curled around him in his undershirt and boxers, was guarding them from those Things. That if he or Marty moved, they’d be startled like bats into chittering, dancing with broken feet, clacking heels and scraping palms over the floor. They were wrapped in bloodied skins, the skins untanned, just stretched, heads still hanging from them as on bearskin rugs, eyes replaced with bits of glass and olives, hair tangled and wild and hanging onto the floor, over the Thing’s asses and cunts and tits and dicks, dark with the smell of humans decaying—

“Marty,” he managed to choke out. “Marty, they skinned her. _They skinned her._ My baby, they—I can’t—I can’t believe it. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to FUCKING _KILL THEM!_ I’m go—”

“Hey. Hey, Rust,” Marty said, holding tighter to him as he tried to scramble out of bed, his hands outstretched for invisible throats. “ _Rust._ It’s okay. You’re just seeing things. Okay? They’re not real. They’re not real. They’re not there.”

Rust stilled gradually, breathing hard through his nose. He was quiet for a minute, slowly sinking back into Marty.

Then, muscles stiffening, “You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“I need proof, Marty.”

“Well, for starters, there’s no such thing as monsters, you idiot. You of all people know that.”

“I know but, Marty, they know about her—they _got_ her. They hurt her. They hurt her. And if I don’t do… something—I have to—I’m gonnakill those motherfuckers! I’m gonna tear their fucking throats out. I won’t let them—they can’t… _They hurt my baby_. Oh my God, they… I’m gonna fucking kill them! I’m gonna kill them! I—”

“It’s okay. It’s gonna be alright. Nothing’s there. Nobody’s getting hurt. It’s just you and me, man. Just you and me,” said Marty, trying not to let his voice falter. Because, goddamn, how do you comfort a man who’s running a one-oh-six fever, shouting through tears about dead things going after a little girl who’s been dead herself over twenty years?

Rust quieted again, one muscle at a time. He was shaking like the last leaf left on a tree before the winter comes, the breath catching in his throat in knife-like sobs.

“Am I losing it?” he asked when he could, when he’d smeared the tear-tracks down his cheeks with a hand and re-tamed the air coming into his lungs.

“I dunno. But if it makes you feel any better,” Marty sighed into his neck, “I dunno know if you had it to begin with, man.”

He chuckled a little. Thank God.

“I’m scared as hell.”

“I know you are. Don’t be. No reason for it. I got you.”

The rain was still pattering down on the roof. The radiator was humming and the blankets were warm and Marty’s chest was pressed up against his back, their heartbeats colliding in unsteady rhythms. The world was reeling on its axis. The floor was writhing. But the bed remained anchored like a magnet attracted to the air around it. And Marty’s breath came steady on his neck, his thumb stroking circles on his chest, and Rust’s eyes began closing on their own accord, without his consent. He was there. Like gravity. Again. As always.

“I love you,” Rust told him, softly. He hardly even noticed the words slip over his own lips. And then, before the response even came, his last tendrils of consciousness were swallowed up by velvet sleep.


	6. Marionettes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is quite possibly entirely incoherent. *yaaawwwnnn* It's late.

Marty took him into the bathroom the next morning and propped him up against the sink like a fabric marionette, told him to hold still. Rust listened, or tried to; Marty took hold of his forehead to keep him from swaying and he shut his eyes under his touch, still whispering things under his breath like incantations, mostly incoherent. He was dripping with sweat.

“Oh, you stupid junkie bastard, I’m gonna kick your ass when we’re through this mess. You’re scaring the shit out of—hold still, goddammit. It’s shaving cream, not fucking conductant. There you go. It’s a good thing you grow a shitty-ass beard because if this thing grew as fast as mine, it’d be down to your goddamn chest by n—hold _still_. Fuck you. Goddammit, can you stop hallucinating for ten consecutive seconds and just— _argh!_ Fuck,I’m sorry. That was me. Just me. Don’t worry. I’m sorry. Sorry, darlin’. Alright. It’s okay. You’ve had worse. Hold still now, man. C’mon. I’m not gonna hurt you. Not _now_ , anyway. In a few days, probably. We’ll have us a good ol’ knock-down-drag-‘em-out fight like back in those days, huh? Yeah. I—hold still, you moron. Be nice to me, a’right? I deserve it right about now, okay? You puked on my fucking carpet, you bastard. Landlady’s gonna skin me. Christ. Rust, man, c’mon, stand up, you can do it. Fuck. You know, you’re makin’ it real hard to take the hell out of you right now, you know that? Goddamn, man. You’re scaring me to death. I me—stay still, Rust.”

Marty’s heart was somewhere in the regions of his stomach. There was nearly as much sweat on his forehead as on Rust’s. He could feel his knees trembling beneath him. This had been a mistake. A huge mistake. The biggest one he’d ever made. He knew it. And there was no getting out of it now, because Rust’s final request of him— _final request, goddammit, don’t think like that_ —had been just this. This. And what was this? Sitting around holding Rust together like an egg that’s already been smashed against a table, waiting for the final drips of yolk to ooze out of his brain? Jesus Christ. Fuck. Fuck this. He needed to call the hospital. He wasn’t equipped to handle this. Not at all. Not in any way. Rust was dying; he was—

“Marty.” It was half of a voice; more like a cough, a shiver. Marty froze with the razor under the stream of the sink, his palm clamped around the back of his partner’s head.

“Fuck. Rust. Hey. Hey, you doin’ a’right there? You okay?”

“Mm, listen,” said Rust. His eyelids split, just a crack, a glimpse of slippery pale surface beneath. “Don’t even fucking think about it.”

“Okay. A’right, Rust. It’s going be okay now. I—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he spat at him, scrabbling for a grip on his arm as his eyes dropped shut for a moment. He swayed dangerously. Marty took his shoulder with the hand that still held the razor and held him up. His Adam’s apple rose and fell, sweat darkening the neck of his T-shirt.  “Listen, man. Ah—I’m not seeing things. Listen to me.”

“I’m listening, man.”

“The hospital, Ginge. Don’t—don’t think about it. Just… stop thinking about it. Okay? ’M fine.”

Something cold scuttled down the back of Marty’s neck. He glanced behind him, feeling the hair on his arms prickle. Rust, when Marty looked back, was slipping back into whatever dusty corner of his skull he’d poked out of a moment ago, his eyelids drooping shut, lips wilting.

Marty opened his mouth a quarter of the way to—

But, considering it, he just shook his head and went on shaving.


	7. Coyotes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the Coyote story from the leader of a service group that I was with at one point. My research on the story didn't turn anything up, so it's just the bits that I could remember, and is probably wildly inaccurate--so my apologies to anyone of Native American (I'd specify what tribe this story's from, but I don't remember and I couldn't find it--sorryyy!) descent for utilizing (read: probably fucking up) bits of your culture for my shitty fan fiction. A million kisses to you<3 It made a good metaphor and I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever. I figure it's just like using Christian symbolism, but then again I'm white as hell and what do I know

And then, with an exit as abrupt as that of a houseguest who’d decided that Rust simply wasn’t worth their time, the fever broke. It was early in the morning of the third day, when the first pale, cold fingers of dawn were parting the curtains. Rust lay, watching the shadows recede, heart beating steadily, and breathed. Felt like the first real air he’d gotten in a long time.

Then, quietly, slowly, so as not to wake Marty—who was curled up against his back, breath warm and sticky against his neck—he slipped out of bed. He went the desk and took a pen out of the blue glass cup and wrote, _Outside. Don’t worry_ , on the back of a page of Marty’s notes—God bless his soul; the man had started taking down little sketches—and went back and put it on the warm spot where he’d lay moments later. He took a pack of cigarettes and his lighter off the side table.

Then he made his way out of the apartment, down in that shitty elevator (which he’d noticed brought little beads of sweat to Marty’s temple every time; wondered if it was an old fear or something recently brought on), and out the doors in the lobby. There was a bench at the top of the little lawn. He went and sat in it. He looked up. Faint scrubs of stars. A glow of orange light in the horizon.

Nothing was moving. Nothing was whispering or slithering or buzzing. The sky looked like a sky and didn’t taste like anything at all. Everything was there, and real, and solid. It’d been so long since that’d been the case that Rust didn’t know what to think about it except that this high a concentration of reality felt almost surreal.

He fished a cigarette out of the pack and got it lit up after a couple of tries. And the first drag felt like God Himself had run fingers down his spine, his arms, the front of his brain. Goddamn. How many days had that been? Who gave a fuck. He leaned back and blew smoke up into the air and started picking out constellations from the sky above.

His pop had liked to tell him a legend he’d got from an old Indian buddy of his back in the war. Rust couldn’t remember the finer details, but he still had the gist of it tucked away in his mind.

 

Once, the world had been sheathed in perpetual night, cocooned away from the sun by a quilt that rested over the tops of all the trees, and stretched to the ends of the earth. Coyote was the only animal who had been able see in all of that darkness, and he’d ruled like a king, hunting freely and with ease. He was a plague on the other animals until one day, tired and without any other hope, they formed a committee to find a volunteer to go up to the sky and find out what was behind the quilt. They first asked the largest bird, Condor, to be their volunteer, but he was too frightened, and refused. They asked Eagle and met the same result. They asked Falcon, and Gull, and Raven, and on down the line until, finally, they came upon Hummingbird, who, desperate to prove herself, agreed.

When Hummingbird reached the quilt days later, exhausted, she found that she was too tired to try and find the edges and get around it so, instead, she steadied her beak and plunged straight through. On the other side was light: dry, blue, and blinding. Frightened, she plunged through once more, folded her wings, and fell back to earth to tell what she had seen. The other animals were already murmuring about the strange points of light that had appeared (torn by her beak) when she’d got back and, curious, the other birds took wing and flew up as well. When they arrived at the quilt, they poked their own holes in it to see what was on the other side and then, fascinated, they found the edges of the quilt, folded it up, and brought it back down to earth with them, showering everything in light.

As a kindness to Coyote, whom they were too frightened of to refuse, they flew back up to the sky to hang up the quilt every now and then so that he could hunt. This became night. The rest of the time was devoted to day.

 

When the sun started to rise, Rust felt a little bit like Coyote emerging, blinking and blinded, from his den on that first morning. His heart thrummed with something like terror when the first glimpse of its orange peak glinted over the treeline. His palms were sweating as he lit another cigarette, watching that bright globe slowly hauling itself up again. Everything still felt a little bit too real, a little bit too bright.

 

When the watercolor lights, gold and yellow and crimson, faded finally to blue, he got up, went inside, and returned to Marty’s apartment to find him still sleeping. He crinkled up the note. He went to look in the kitchen cabinets for pancake batter. Marty found him eventually—with flour on his sweatpants and a stack of pancakes already laid out on the table—wrapped his arms around his waist, and kissed his neck until his mouth fell open to the ceiling and the skillet was sending up thick, white smoke.

And Rust, watching Marty settle down at the table and begin dumping a rough gallon of syrup onto his plate, had for a moment to blink back tears of triumph at the strange warmth humming in his chest.


	8. Flames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, I promised cute things, so (after much ado) you get cute things. ^_^

They spent the afternoon huddled up together on the couch under a single blanket, steadily working their way through four cans of Campbell’s Italian Wedding soup. Rust drank his straight out of the bowl when he found that his hands were jittering too much to keep spoonfuls of soup from spilling down his bare front. Already three bullet holes, an angry white line just above the last rib from somebody’s knife on the boat in Alaska, and a collection of swollen red welts of disgruntled skin that’d grown up on top of the stitches he’d never taken out—he didn’t care to add burn scars to the list. Marty set down his spoon when Rust did, saying, “You’re right. More fun this way,” like he didn’t get it. He got it. Didn’t matter.

They spent the evening in a tangle of limbs on the couch. Unmoving, fully clothed—just holding one another, being held. It overwhelmed both of them a little bit, holding and being held. No insinuation of sex. Just being there. Loving. Being loved. Marty felt brand-new at this, and maybe he was. Rust wasn’t. (And, no, Marty could never fill that hole inside of him, that space where she had been—nobody, nothing could have—but he gave Rust the courage to try and patch it up.)

When they went to bed that night, Marty was sound asleep the minute his head hit the pillow, exhausted after the past days and warm with Rust’s presence. Rust remained awake, pressed into his partner’s side as it rose and fell, listening to the bugs humming outside in the trees. The world was at peace, and it felt strange. Scary, almost. Like the light could suck him in and burn him up like a moth tempted to a flame.

And it happened, sometime in the middle of the night, whatever it was that he’d known he’d been waiting for. He didn’t even notice at first, with his tired gaze trained on the ceiling rather than Marty—but suddenly all of Marty’s muscles got tight and drew Rust’s eyes to his face. He was grimacing. Rust didn’t move, didn’t want to wake him, but Marty flailed out, grabbed a handful of the sheets, beat a heel into Rust’s calf. He stilled, let out a low moan, and then relaxed.

Rust sat there, breathing, watching him with bright, wary eyes focused on him in the dark. Marty was still for a while, and Rust had to blink colored blossoms from his vision more than once—but it came again eventually. A grimace of pain or fear or something, and then Marty twisted over, grabbed onto the fitted sheet so hard that two of its corners came loose from around the mattress. The back of his shirt was covered in sweat. He reached out aimlessly in the dark again, fast, and his hand rapped hard against the wall. His knees bent up. He was panting.

And Rust reached out, grabbed hold of his shoulder, and said, sharply, “Marty.”

He woke up with a yell—a rasping choke of a yell that wasn’t quite a yell, more of an expulsion of air and dream. He tried to strike out at Rust. Missed. Rust braced an arm over his chest and leaned over his face, put a hand in his hair.

They lay, looking at one another, nose to nose, panting.

“You alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just… yeah.”

“You been having a lot of bad dreams?”

Marty’s eyes skated down Rust’s face, onto his chest, over his shoulder.

“Not _a lot_.”

“So, _yes_.”

“No,” said Marty, eyes returning, defensively. “Just… y’know. It happens. Occasionally. Happens to everybody.”

“Not to me.”

“Naw, it wouldn’t, would it?” Marty grumbled, sliding out from under him and turning his back, pulling the pillow back firmly under his head. “You don’t fucking sleep.”

“Look. If this is about the Yellow King—”

“It’s not about that. It just happens. Happens to everybody. Okay? You happy?”

“You’ve always been a bad liar.”

“Rust, shut the fuck up. I’m tryina sleep.”

The room went quiet for a long moment, the only sounds coming from outside the window: the rumble of a truck’s wheels going by on the road, the murmurs of windblown trees, the steady hum of the insects. Then:

“Marty.”

Rust wedged up beside him, slid his knees into the crooks of Marty’s and his chest up against his back. He slid a hand over his chest and felt his heart racing, felt the air slip out of his lungs at his touch. He pressed his nose up against the nape of his neck.

“You gotta let me be the big spoon sometimes, too.”

“Sure. Whatever keeps your mouth shut while I’m sleeping.”

“You know what I mean.”

His nose slipped down into the neck of Marty shirt, scratched against the tag. His hair whispered on the nape of his neck.

“When did the dreams start?”

He didn’t answer him.

“Look, Marty. I’ve come to terms with—” He stopped, as if saying it out loud might cause the spell to dissipate, like the dark might snatch him back if he spoke too loud. “If you can’t come to terms with yourself, with your fears, admit to yourself exactly who and what you are, you’re just projecting your shadow onto a blank page and filling in the face that you think you want with a marker.”

“Oh, Lord,” Marty groaned, shutting his eyes and shifting closer into him. “Not now, Rust.”

“Fuck you." But his voice held the faintest edge of a smile. “Listen to me. I’m just trying to say… if you’re hurting, Marty, acknowledge it. And let me give you a hand with it. Alright? Is that so bad? You think your masculinity can stand it?”

“I’m in bed with you, you stupid bastard. My masculinity’s gone straight out the fucking window.”

Rust thought about that for a minute.

“Nah,” he said, eventually. “Women don’t make a man a man. Nobody makes a man a man but himself. But I think you know that already.”

Marty’s breath spilled out of his chest in a sigh.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” he said.

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“’Course you weren’t.”

“You gonna be alright?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to talk about those dreams of yours?”

“Nope.”

“In the morning.”

“I’ll think about it.”

They lay there for a while, curled up together, warm inside and out. Rust’s hand on Marty’s chest until Marty reached up and took it, pressed it to his lips, and then tucked it into his neck like a small promise. The cars on the road. The insects in the grass. The wind in the trees. And calm. People forgot sometimes that calm came after the storm too.

“Hey, Rust?”

“Mmm.”

“I love you too.”


	9. Skeletons

Claire was a series of moments. Nowadays he seemed to think of her more as an experience, a lifetime, a scrapbook of images and sensations and feelings than as another person; as a long drive with the windows down and a fluttering skirt and the smell of hot asphalt rather than the girl in the driver’s seat; her bedroom back in school, with its faux-antique map of the world hung up on the wall and a bookshelf full of Wilde and Austen and Whitman and Shakespeare (she’d thought _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ was idiotic when he’d lent it to her); as the tang of hay going musty and the feel of cold concrete underneath his skin and the tremulous nicker of her father’s horse in the stall when she’d taken him home over spring vacation and they’d fucked right there in the stable like a pair of guilt- and youth-fueled hillbillies; the tears on her parents’ faces in the cold morning light of their wedding day, the smell of marzipan and hairspray, the Christmas lights strung around the narthex of the little church at what had been a thankfully short and unmemorable reception; the smell of brewing instant coffee, gently blue sheets, an old flannel shirt of his hanging unbuttoned over the bare swell of her pregnant belly. And beyond that everything was Sophia until—the kitchen and unwashed dishes and the smell of garbage that hadn’t been taken out for days and the sight of her lying curled up on the tile floor against the counter in nothing but her bathrobe and the lights still burning overhead and then she was up and she was shouting and her couldn’t hear her, her movements strobe-lighting in his brain, and stumbling into the living room to get away from her and falling asleep next to the couch, mostly under the coffee table—

Claire was a series of moments because—and he knew this consciously—he couldn’t really stand to think of her as anything else. She’d been a gilded feeling in his lungs, a trembling in his belly, an itch in the muscles of his face, a needy warmth in his arms. He’d stripped her back to the skeleton when it had started to hurt too much. He’d pared her down to facts and flashes and familiar scents.

With Marty it wasn’t like that. He’d never felt that insatiable, whole-body burning he’d felt for Claire with him, never wanted to laugh with excitement at the gift of his very presence the way he’d had with her: giggles rising up in his throat like shaken soda, trembling, sweating, anticipatory and wonderful. Clare had been everything. Marty had never been anything more than just Marty.

That was enough.


	10. Jaws

Two and a half weeks in, Rust went back to his room behind the bar while Marty was at work, only to find there a bed with an actual frame and a man sleeping in it. He’d brought garbage bags, but the countertop and the coffee table and the couch were already clean. Everything else was gone. He re-locked the door, quietly, and went around to the front to the entrance of the bar. The door was locked, but he had the key for that too. He gave a tired nod to the security camera.

Inside, he borrowed a glass and a few fingers of Jameson and two quarters from the register, and he went to the pay phone in the corner.

He picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Wanted to make you an apology.”

The owner was silent for a long minute. Then there came the crackle of an exhale in the receiver.

“Jesus Christ, Cohle.”

Rust said nothing.

“Where the fuck you been?”

“Got sick.”

“What kinda sick.”

It wasn’t a question. And it was aggressive.

“Yeah,” said Rust, after a long pause, because he knew he had to. “But I’m clean now.”

“Yeah. You know, what, though? Fuck you, Cohle. I got methheads buzzing around all over now, looking for you. I know what you been doing. You’re lucky I don’t set the fucking cops on your ass.”

“It’s all over now.”

“Yeah, shit.”

“Don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s true. It’s all over. And I’ll get outta your hair.”

 “You know what I found back there in that room? Fucking—”

“Yeah, I know what you found.”

“You are one lucky bastard. I tell you. You know that? Because you are one stupid-ass son of a bitch, Cohle. I swear to God.”

Rust chuckled a little, down in his throat, took another sip of the stolen whiskey.

“Do I ever know,” he said.

The line went silent again, for a while this time.

“You know, the first thing I thought was that you’d finally gone and jumped off a bridge somewhere, or something.”

“I’ve considered it.”

“I’ve noticed. But, anyway, then the guys started telling me some fucked-up story ‘bout how some guy’d walked in here and… I dunno. I mean…”

“It’s true.”

And the line was quiet again.

Then, “Cohle?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“I’m happy for you.”

It was a minute before Rust could find the words in his throat.

“Thank you.”

“Sure. You’re still fired.”

“I know.”

“And I threw out all those creepy-ass books of yours. Go get yourself a fucking life.”

“Fuck you,” said Rust, but there was a smile in his voice.

“Get out of my bar, Cohle.” The owner’s voice matched, gruffly.

Rust hung up without saying goodbye. He swallowed the last of the whiskey, washed out the glass and replaced the bottle, and locked the place back up.

And the sides of his jaws were still itching with the last hints of a smile as walked back to his truck.


	11. Dragons

Marty came home that night and found Rust sprawled out on the bedroom floor, fast asleep and surrounded by a flurry of case files. What seemed like almost everything, old and new, that Marty had collected in that ten-year period of his absence. His splayed hand still rested like a stunned, wiry spider on the edge of something involving a man who’d killed his neighbor’s cat and hung it by the tail from the overhang of the neighbor’s front porch. He didn’t even stir as Marty came in, just kept right on snoring in his usual choking way—unlike him, and at another time it would have made Marty worried, but the man had spent two weeks nearly sweating and shivering and hallucinating right out of his skin, and as far as Marty could tell, he hadn’t slept more than three minutes straight the entire time. So he figured he’d leave him alone for now, let the poor bastard rest.

Didn’t mean he couldn’t keep watch, though. He took a file at random and sat, paging it, in bed for a good two hours until Rust’s snores came to a shuddering halt. He watched him roll over onto his bed and lay an arm across his chest as his eyes came blearily open. His ribs rose and fell with his breath under the loose fabric of Marty’s T-shirt, near-perfect outlines—goddamn, was he ever skinny. Looked like he could have counted the square meals he’d had in his lifetime on one hand. Kind of made Marty wonder whether he might have starved to death sooner than he’d overdosed. Made you almost feel sorry for the guy—almost. Also made you want to strangle him.

Rust didn’t notice him until he leaned over and said, “Damn. Was kinda hoping I’d have to come and wake you with True Love’s Kiss.”

Rust just about jumped out of his skin, eyes flashing with animal fight until they focused on Marty’s face. The wiry muscles in his neck twisted up wryly as his fists uncurled.

“Only works if you’re Prince Charming,” he muttered, laying back down with his eyelids drooping shut again sleepily. A sigh ran down the length of his body. “Which you sure as hell ain’t.”

Marty got off the bed and padded over to him, brow crinkling in mock-irritation.

“That’s assuming you’re a sleeping beauty,” he fired back, shoving case files out of the way to lay down beside him with his arms behind his head. “Which don’t sound much like you either.”

“What?” Rust asked, the curl of a smile stretching up on one corner of his mouth when he turned towards him. “You don’t think I could pull off that dress of hers?”

“Nah. Yellow ain’t your color,” said Marty, before he was lost to chuckles for a minute or two. And when he’d regathered himself, he rolled over onto his side and draped a hand over the hollow between Rust’s ribcage and his hipbone, thumb drawing tiny circles.

“You got real thin, man.”

Rust smoothed a thumb over one of Marty’s worried eyebrows.

“What’re you, my grandmother?”

“Naw, just… jealous is all,” he said, laughing a little. He wasn’t jealous. Then, suddenly curious, “You ever have a grandmother?”

“No. You?”

“Mmm-hmm. One was a bitch from hell, and the other was sweet as anything. The bitch from hell used to babysit me after her idiot alcoholic husband died of cirrhosis. And the sweet one died after _her_ idiot alcoholic husband pushed her down the stairs. Go figure.”

It sounded like a joke in Marty’s tone of voice, but Rust didn’t laugh. Neither did Marty.

They looked at each other for a while, eyes slowly softening into one another’s like butter on lukewarm toast, until Rust breached the space between them and settled a kiss on his jawline. He pressed his cheek up against his, gripped him into an embrace.

“It’s pink, by the way,” he said, after a long moment.

“What?” Marty asked, pulling away a little.

“It’s pink,” Rust repeated, deadpan. “Aurora’s dress.”

“Who the fuck is Aurora?”

“Sleeping Beauty.” Rust crinkled up his face in disbelief. “C’mon, man. Sleeping Beauty. You ever watch all those princess movies with your girls?”

“I thought her name was Beauty.”

“Aw, goddammit, man. You really never seen that movie?”

“I’ve _seen_ it, I just don’t think I paid all that much attention. _You_ paid that much attention?”

“Well, she really liked that one,” Rust told him. He flicked his eyes down the carpet, a tiny smile creeping over his face. “She liked the dragon. Didn’t scare her one bit. In fact, she’d make herself a cave under the armchair and put a blanket over her arms like wings and she'd start... she'd start making this growling noise, y'know? And I’d have to be the knight in shining armor come to slay her in the name of the kingdom. And so then we'd wrestle and I'd let her win after a while. And then I'd play dead while she'd flap out the blanket and pretend to fly around, and... and knock down all the pillows from the sofa like she was destroying the kingdom. It was so fucking cute—I just... Ah, shit.”

Marty looked at him. He looked back after a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. The words were heavy with breath and embarrassment. Soft. Nothing that could have come from that man of carved stone eighteen years ago.

“The fuck are you sorry for?” Marty said. “I talk about my fucked-up grandparents; you talk about your kid. We talk and, y’know, we listen and we co-exist, like. It works. I like it. Ain’t nothing to be sorry for.”

They’d come a long way, Marty realized. Slowly, but it’d happened.

“You’re a good man, Martin Hart.”

Marty’s mouth went dry with quivering at the way his name drawled out, slow and smooth, in Rust’s mouth. And there was no question that the man knew exactly what he was doing, too.

“It's gonna be alright, darlin’.”

"I know,” Rust said, tracing the shape of Marty’s ear, breathing hot onto his throat. “I just get to feeling weird after I been sleeping for a while.”

“It’s a good kind of weird. I—God, say my name like that again. Please.”

In one smooth motion, Rust was up, straddling him, with his hands pinned down on Marty’s shoulders. There was something bright in his eyes, behind the cloudy traces of lingering thought.

“Go on and make me,” he said.


	12. Ghosts

They came less frequently nowadays—less frequently than he’d ever thought they could, and for that he was grateful—but they still came. Running their fingers down the walls of the hallways in his skull, whispering, singing, click-clacking their metal-shod heels on the floor and scraping their throats raw with shrieks as the nails went deeper, bloodless. They’d whip themselves up into a frenzied, high-pitched dance every now and then and there was no stopping them. They’d roar through his whole body during those times, dark and soundless but bright enough, nearly, to shrivel up his eyes and loud enough, nearly, to make him claw his eardrums out with his fingernails. And he’d step into the bathroom and sit on the floor in the dark and shake, alone. Marty knew an awful lot, but he didn’t need to see how deeply their cuffs bit into Rust’s ankles. Didn’t need to know he was chained to a thousand ghosts and none of them knew how to let go.

 He’d spent most of his life trying to convince them to do just that, to let go, to give up their hold on him. Tried to shrink himself small enough inside of the slippery covering that was Crash to work those cuffs off. Tried to grow so big that they’d burst open. And then, when that hadn’t worked, he’d tried reigning them back in, tugging them closer. After all, they’d been something close to symbiotic for years. When he ate, they ate. When he cried, they cried.

And now here, suddenly, was a pair of clippers, a chance at freedom, at _life,_ and there was Rust, backing away with arms spread out protectively, a million rotting specimens of death and decay crouching, frightened, in his shadow.  Sure, cut them off his ankles and they’d be none the wiser. Would never notice what had happened. And he’d be free to go, free to find something meaningful beyond the scope of avoidance. Getting devils off your back never hurt. In fact, the longer you kept them, the more steps you took with them there, the heavier they got.

But the thing was, one of those things, one of those twisted, rotting dead things was his daughter. Or had been.

Cut off Maggie and her smile, her kindness, her friendship that’d been, the whole time, just like that bottle of wine she’d brought over that night. Cut off Ginger and the way Crash had winked at him, had swung his hips around when he’d walked because, shit, it was life or death and he and Crash had always been a pair of fucking cowards. Cut off Claire and her plump little lips and her puzzle pieces all over the coffee table. Go forward a few years and cut off the sting of her palm on his cheek. Cut off his pop; cut off the way he’d talk to him, like he was a mirror or a dog or the empty air, something that didn’t know how to respond rather than something that simply wouldn’t; cut off days of near-starvation while the old fuck went hunting without him; cut off the cold and the silence and the blankness of snow when got old enough to be hauled along as an extra rifle; cut off black eyes; cut off the kids at school and more black eyes. And his cunt of a mother who’d left him to freeze—cut her off too.

But not Sophia. Never Sophia. He’d be six feet deep in the ground before he’d let himself stop mourning her.

 

When he stood up again from where he’d folded himself up against the wall, his knees didn’t shake. He gave himself a long, hard look in the mirror. Coldly blue eyes. Hair sprouting off his head in loose waves. Hollowed cheeks. Square shoulders and collarbones like pleats ironed stiff in fabric. Wiry muscles in a neck going wrinkly. Skinny and greying and looking more exhausted than if he’d sprinted all the way to Hell, through it, and back—but alive.

He flushed the toilet and ran the water in the sink, made a racket with the squeaky towel-holder. Then he went into the kitchen, where Marty was trying to cook something in a red sauce that was splattering all over the stove-top, and put his arms around his waist.

“Shit, that guy with the accent on the cooking channel’d have a field day with you.”

“Aw, fuck you.”

“Hm,” said Rust, calmly, and slid his hands down just ever-so-slightly.

“Ah—oh, goddammit, man, I’m trying to cook.”

“Needs to simmer.”

“I don’t think—” He looked doubtfully at the stuff bubbling in the pot. He dropped the wooden spoon. “Naw, fuck it.”

And Rust had already hitched a finger through Marty’s front beltloop and was tugging him by it, gently, slowly, to the kitchen table like a matador leading a steer by the ring in its nose. He slid his hands down into Marty’s front pockets, knocked their hips together, and tilted his head to grab hold of Marty’s lips with his. Marty grabbed him down under his armpits, thumbs pressing into his chest until they slid up to stroke at his collarbones. He bit at his bottom lip and tugged it between his own.

“Marty.”

“Yeah.”

“You make me happy, man.”

“Great,” said Marty, distractedly. His hands had found Rust’s ass under the denim of his jeans. “You too.”

But Rust knew that already, nowadays.


End file.
